Bones May Be Those of Ancient Athenians in Pericles' Funeral Oration

Early in the Peloponnesian War, the remains of Athenian soldiers killed in battle against the Spartans were interred in communal tombs outside Athens's west gate, off the road to the academy where Plato taught. It was at this cemetery in 431 B.C. that the statesman Pericles, speaking from a high platform at the funeral, described the greatness of Athens in one of history's most eloquent orations.

''It is for such a city, then, that these men nobly died in battle,'' Pericles declared, ''thinking it right not to be deprived of her, just as each of their survivors should be willing to toil for her sake.''

Archaeologists think they have found remains of 200 to 250 Athenian citizen-soldiers from that time, perhaps the very ones memorialized by Pericles. Their ashes and bones were excavated three years ago at a construction site in Athens, but now they have been delivered to Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., for the first detailed analysis.

The examination of the remains, expected to take several years, is being done at a university laboratory by Dr. Anagnostis Agelarakis, a forensic anthropologist at Adelphi and specialist in Greek archaeology. The excavations were directed by Dr. Charis Stoupa of the Department of Classical Antiquities in Greece.

''The discovery of state burials containing bones dating from the early years of the Peloponnesian War brings a new sense of reality to the story of that crucial time in Greek history,'' said Dr. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, a scholar of classical studies at Wesleyan University. He was quoted in an article on the new findings in the current issue of Archaeology magazine.

Although the bodies had been cremated, as was the custom for heroes, the remains are not all ash. Many recognizable pieces of arm and leg bones, skull and jaw and vertebra and pelvis fragments are among the 200 pounds of bone being studied by Dr. Agelarakis. A preliminary investigation has already showed that all the bones that could be so classified were from men.

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Dr. Agelarakis said yesterday that further analysis would concentrate on what the bones could reveal about the age and physical size range of the soldiers, their diets, the diseases and accidents they suffered, any evidence of surgical intervention in treating broken bones, and traces of heavy metals possibly ingested from vessels they ate and drank from.

An early inspection of the bones, Dr. Agelarakis said, hinted at damage and growth patterns in the bones that might reveal the occupational stresses of the dead. Some clues suggested that the men had spent much time riding, mounting and dismounting horses and so must have been members of the cavalry. But the heat of cremation, the anthropologist said, would have destroyed the organic material of the bone, including genetic material like DNA.

While archaeologists could not affirm that the bones were from soldiers of Pericles, they said the evidence was strong. First, all the remains appear to be those of men. The burial sites fit descriptions in literature of the Demosion Sema, or People's Grave, an honored burial ground in classical times for statesmen, generals and soldiers who died in combat. The style of pottery among the burials dated the tombs to 431 to 421 B.C., the first years of a civil war that dragged on to the surrender of Athens in 404.

''This is it -- we have the context,'' Dr. Agelarakis said in an interview, noting the evidence supporting the interpretation that these are remains of soldiers for Athens or one of its allies.